Why Convert::Number::Coptic?
Because it wasn't there :) The goal for this package is to provide
numeral and date conversion services in pure Perl under Coptic
conventions.
What This Package Can Do
At this point numeral system conversion between Western (Arabic, base 10)
and Coptic. Coptic numerals sequences must be in UTF-8. The package is
known to work on Perl 5.6.1 and has not been tested on other versions of
Perl by the author.
Coptic numerals can be formatted in two ways. The standard convention
is to use only underlines from 10^3 and onward. A lesser used convention
accumulates only overlines. This package uses the standard convention.
Unicode does not define which diacritical symbols should be used for
composing Coptic numerals. The solution here is to use U+0304 for single
overline, U+0331 for single underline and U+0347 for double underline.
Since Unicode lacks diacritical symbols to build up numbers indefinitely
(can't blame Unicode here) a complication arises for numbers of 1 billion
or larger. Since there is no triple or quadruple, etc, underline non-spacing
diacritical marks, this package simply appends extra diacritical symbols.
For example:
10^5 => (U+03C1)(U+0331)
10^6 => (U+03B1)(U+0347)
10^7 => (U+03B9)(U+0347)
10^8 => (U+03C1)(U+0347)
10^9 => (U+03B1)(U+0347)(U+0331)
10^10 => (U+03B9)(U+0347)(U+0331)
10^11 => (U+03C1)(U+0347)(U+0331)
10^12 => (U+03B1)(U+0347)(U+0347)
: : : : :
The shared Greek-Coptic range of Unicode is used by this package. This
will be update when Unicode is revised to better support Coptic.